It should come as no great surprise that the reason wines from different regions don’t taste and smell the same is because no two regions share the same climatic, geographic and historic attributes. Indeed, wine styles can vary greatly from row to row within a single vineyard. And this is as it should be.

Bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party or gifting one is a frequent occurrence for most of us. But unless you’re in the wine business or an ardent wine consumer, you probably don’t really know what to buy. After all, there are literally thousands and thousands of options at every price point. This post will boost your confidence so that the next time the occasion arises, you’ll be able to tackle this social obligation with ease.

Our winter of discontent is thankfully over. Time to transition to lighter and lither wines, be they white or red. And let’s not settle for the path of least resistance. I’ll say it. I hate rosé. OK, hate is maybe too strong. But for me, unless that pink stuff has bubbles, I’m just not interested.

Wine, like real estate, is all about location, location, location. Taste, whether it’s in wine or real estate, is truly subjective. That said, it’s not that difficult to find a little consensus when comparing one address to another. The same can be said for comparing one wine to another. 

Barolo is probably Italy’s highest prestige red wine. There are certainly other more-than-worthy candidates. Barbaresco, Barolo’s considerably smaller, more compact neighbor just to the east that is also composed of 100% nebbiolo, is right up there.

If you know enough about wine to know what you like—even better, what you don’t like—you’ve given your somm all he really needs to know (other than your budget) to select an appropriate bottle or glass.

While there are certainly other factors in play, warmer growing seasons mean physiologically riper grapes which in turn mean more grape sugars. More grape sugar, more food for hungry yeast to feast on during fermentation. The result is higher alcohol and generally plusher, more approachable wines when young.

If I can speak—or write!—my truth, there are few things more disappointing to me than being served a white wine that is too warm (the corollary is a red coming out too cold, although that situation doesn’t warrant corrective measures simply because the wine will come up suitably in temperature in a matter of minutes) or worse, a sparkler that isn’t cool enough.

Many companies, large and small, try to keep their teams energized and focused by offering outside-of-the-office events. Sometimes these are team-building exercises—think paintball!—and sometimes they are just casual sip-and-chat happy hour excursions.

Age is just a number. Sometimes, that is. When it comes to white wines, all wines, really, there are definitely some general rules relating to how long you can expect to hold a bottle before it no longer resembles itself.

Being at ease when choosing a bottle might not seem to be particularly relevant to what you get paid to do, but it is, in its way, an important aspect of corporate culture, regardless of whether you are at a three-person startup trying to raise venture capital, working at a trading desk or fine-tuning marketing campaigns.

While chardonnay may be the world’s most commercially important white grape, Sauvignon Blanc is the white wine I hear consumers claim as their own most often. Before delving a bit into a couple of SB’s most prevalent styles, for those who may not be aware, all wines are not necessarily named for the grape(s) they are made with.

In this post, you’ll learn why sometimes that bottle you’ve selected just isn’t any good. There are a few reasons why your bottle sucked, ranging from it being corked to cooked to prematurely oxidized. The telltale signs of all of these unfortunate events are easy to spot once you know what you’re looking for—or smelling!

The purpose of this post is to set out what you should expect to find when you grab a bottle off a shelf label-wise. The label is a very, very important piece of the wine puzzle, and the bad news for consumers is that there isn’t a whole lot of uniformity when it comes to satisfying each governing body’s labeling requirements.

Perhaps the subtitle should be, “After all, you should have far better things to do with your time than rigorously study wine.” But at the same time, people are drinking wine like never before. We are perhaps a generation or two from being as comfortable with wine as an everyday beverage as our European brethren are, but the day will come.

Anything that can be said about the swirls of confusion relating to Burgundy’s whites certainly applies to the reds as well. More so, actually, because in the region’s heart, the Côte d’Or, there is more red than white made. The white-hot pinot noir is the grape, and because it is the only authorized one for reds, it is also just about the only straightforward thing about Burgundy. But that is as far as the simplicity goes.

Perhaps the only straightforward thing that can be said about white wines from Burgundy is that they are all made with chardonnay (technically, that’s not even true; there is one other authorized white grape, aligoté, two, if you include the minuscule amount of pinot blanc planted, but you’re likely to rarely come across them—though aligoté does have its adherents—so most treat them as though they don’t exist).

I hesitate to even use the word etiquette because our restaurant experiences now—even at white-tablecloth venues—are vastly less formal—some might say, less stuffy! My goal in this post is to help you navigate those steps by explaining why they are what they are and point out which are silly.

We’ll take up right where we left off in Part 1. You’ve chosen a bottle, the somm or server has presented it for your approval and you nod yes because it’s the correct one. Your bottle is then opened and when it is, something happens that has flummoxed most diners since bottles have been opened at restaurant tables.

Few regions in the wine world are as worshiped, and at the same time misunderstood, as Burgundy. The wines, Chardonnay for the whites and Pinot Noir for the reds, are certifiably wonderful, more so now than at any other time in the region’s long winemaking history.